


hit me where it hurts

by orphan_account



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Light Dom/sub, M/M, Punishment, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-18 20:33:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9401903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: James finds him later, rolls his chair over, feet pushing against the rough carpet and bumps his knees against Lawrence’s seat.“So that’s a thing, huh?” James asks, doesn’t waste time tip-toeing around it and Lawrence doesn’t move his head, eyes moving just enough to glance over at him before he stares, fixed, back at his screen. He swallows.“It could, quite possibly, be a thing,” he replies.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Somebody please slam-dunk me into the dumpster where I belong.

It starts off—as most things tend to do when he’s involved—as a joke.

Someone asks a question and the words immediately spill from Lawrence’s mouth in response, even though it had been rhetorical. He says it the same way he says a lot of things—without thinking it through (Adam says once that someone should make him a t-shirt that says _CAUTION: MOUTH OPERATES FASTER THAN BRAIN_ )—and James doesn’t know if he really is wrong about what he said or if everything he was saying was categorically true but he reaches over and spanks him, just hard enough to get a reaction.

“No,” he says firmly, “Wrong. Bad Lawrence.”

Everyone laughs to varying degrees—which is what he had anticipated—and Lawrence does too, but it’s clearly forced and James hadn’t missed the split second after it happened when he had let out the smallest of gasps that seemed to form the word _oh_ when he let the air out or the flash of darkness in his eyes. Remarkably, it manages to shut him down for a few seconds and he looks like he’s trying to come up with something else to say back to him, to make the situation more comically uncomfortable instead of whatever the hell else was quietly going on but they’ve already moved on to the next bit that, perhaps thankfully, directly involved neither of them.

Lawrence isn’t _quiet_ during the rest of it but something has definitely shifted.

 

\- - -

 

James finds him later, rolls his chair over, feet pushing against the rough carpet and bumps his knees against Lawrence’s seat.

“So that’s a thing, huh?” James asks, doesn’t waste time tip-toeing around it and Lawrence doesn’t move his head, eyes moving just enough to glance over at him before he stares, fixed, back at his screen. He swallows.

“It could, quite possibly, be a thing,” he replies.

“I want to say I’m surprised but, somehow, I’m really not.” It makes sense in a way that probably shouldn’t and he’s going to crack another joke at his expense—because how could he _not_ —but then Lawrence says something back to him that makes him snap his teeth together, jaw slightly clenched:

“You obviously seemed to like it, too.”

“Yeah. Well…” James starts, clears his throat. He won’t lie, claim that it hadn’t been something he allowed to wriggle its way through him since then, each second of it rewinding, playing slow when he felt his mind drifting. He’d felt something, too, the minute his hand started to make the movement and it had sent a jolt up through his wrist, a prickly feeling sparking in his chest. There were things, James figures, that you never figure out about yourself because you never put yourself into a situation to discover it. “So okay, then,” he says, leans forward in his chair, presses his elbows onto the arm of the one Lawrence is sitting in, “What are we going to do about it?”

 

\- - -

 

They don't sit down and plan it out, have a serious conversation, tap it out in code on an electronic schedule.

It's just something that they both are intently aware would happen, lurking above them like some sort of heady, heavy cloud.

( _How will I know exactly_ , James had asked. How will he know, he means, to set things in motion. Willing? Surprisingly, yes. Able? Definitely. Ready? That he's not sure about. So he asks.  _How will I know?_

 _You'll know_ , Lawrence had said simply in response.)

 

\- - -

 

“Maybe we tone down the yelling during this one, huh?” James says to Lawrence just before they start another gameplay. It’s late and they’re all pushing it into the tail end of their schedule so they didn’t have to sandwich it in somewhere tomorrow and they all laugh, Lawrence shrugs, tells him that he can’t make any promises.

He doesn’t tone it down and is, in fact, almost _worse_ than he had been earlier and maybe James doesn’t entirely blame him but it teeters precariously on the line between ‘hilarious’ and ‘disaster’ and, when they’re finished, Adam and Bruce are happy to just walk away, the door clunking heavily behind them.

Lawrence is hovering over his side of the desk, bent slightly over as he looks at something on his computer and James walks over, stands beside him.

“Lawrence,” he says, makes his voice low and rigid.

“Hm? Yeah? What’s up?” Lawrence is only half-paying attention, doesn’t even look at him so James takes a step forward, grips a hand on his elbow, pushes closer and keeps the same tone to his voice when he repeats himself, says his name again and it’s enough this time that Lawrence looks up, blinks just once at him and that’s all that’s needed.

There’s a desk with some space and he leans over it, stretches his arms out, bent at the elbows to steady himself, uses the fingers on his left hand to curl just gently, waiting, around the sharp edge of cool surface.

“I told you,” James says, breaks the sentence with the first blow, “to tone down the yelling.” He hesitates, thinks about it, hits him again.

“I know,” Lawrence says. “I said I couldn’t—” A third one, interrupts him and he lets a noise escape instead of words, his body jerking forward slightly with the impact.

“I heard what you said,” James tells him and he can feel warmth spreading over his face, up to his ears, can’t figure out if it’s the rational part of him that’s disconcerted about this or if it’s something else entirely. Asking _what are we going to do about it?_ is all well and good until you’re suddenly in the reality of actually _doing something about it_ and then there’s suddenly a lot to think about at the most inopportune time.

( _You obviously seemed to like it, too_.

 _Of course you fucking like it_ , a voice laughs at him in his head after Lawrence’s previous words stop ringing in his ears, _For crying out loud you_ initiated _this, remember? You could have left this as something you just happened to learn about your friend and walked away, never mentioned it again. But here you are_.)

“James…” Lawrence says and James blinks, realizes that he must have been a little too deep in his own thoughts, lost track of where he was (how that was possible he wasn’t sure) but plays it off as if he had stopped on purpose, just to give him a decent excuse, tells him to be quiet with his movements—the smack of his hand—instead of his words and then:

“You think maybe next time when I give you a suggestion you’ll take me seriously?”

“Probably not,” Lawrence says and he knows— _they both know_ —he’s antagonizing him on purpose and it works as intended, provokes a response and James hits a bit harder than he had been before, listens to Lawrence make a strangled sound that was pulled from him like putty, a moan and a cry swirled into one. He hesitates, arm raised.

“Was that—?” He starts to ask, hears Lawrence take a shuddered breath.

“No, that was—” He’s gripping the desk and he slides his palm along the sharp edge. “Good,” he finally says, as if he had to take a moment to search for the right word.

“Well then...” James says and does it again. Lawrence curses. “You wanna give me a different answer?”

“Not really,” Lawrence says.

“You know,” James says after a few seconds of silence, “They might come back any minute.” He didn’t know that for sure. It was highly likely that they had gone home for the evening, that the two of them had the place to themselves until the morning but neither Bruce or Adam had specifically said goodbye, hadn’t made it clear and the thought suddenly makes the back of James’ neck hot, start to sweat, but he pretends that it doesn’t bother him, that he’s only bringing it up so he could finally hear what he wanted. “I really don’t think you want them to see you like this, do you?”

“I don’t—” James cuts him off with two more unrestrained hits. “ _Fuck_.”

“All you have to say is that you should have listened to me and that you’re sorry and then this can stop.”

“But I’m— They were—” Lawrence tries to get out but James doesn’t let him, can tell what direction he was going for ( _I’m not sorry, not really. They were being stupid, how could I_ not _yell at them. They were asking for it. I could have done so much better_ ), brings his hand down in quick, charged successions, doesn’t give Lawrence a chance to give him any of it and he’s counting each one quietly under his breath, his fingers tingling and it’s when he whispers out a _ten_ to himself, arm ready that Lawrence shouts, almost pathetically: “ _Fu_ — Okay! You— I fucked up. I didn’t listen! I’m sorry!”

“You mean it?” James keeps his arm where it is, hand flat and level with his head and Lawrence turns his own head, finally looks at James over his shoulder and his eyes are slightly unfocused, face bright pink, his bottom lip red from where he must have been biting down on it. James has never seen him like this and he feels his stomach clench like someone crumpling a ball of paper. The sternness he was attempting to project falters, just slightly.

“Yes,” Lawrence says quietly and James finally drops his arm, takes a step back and nods, watches Lawrence stand, holds himself slightly dazed and pliable.

‘You, uh, want to sit?” James asks, laughs lightly as soon as he says it. “Probably not. But here.” He’s not sure about this part, not really, but he leads Lawrence to the couch, sets him down, puts his fingers through his hair and isn’t sure why he does it. “Wait here.” He leaves, finds an old ice pack buried in the back of a stale smelling freezer, comes back and Lawrence is exactly where James left him and he crouches down in front of Lawrence, shows him what he had found and Lawrence actually smiles, just a bit. “That was…” James clears his throat, sits down beside Lawrence, leans against him, taps his pinky on the back of his hand. “Weird.” He glances at Lawrence’s profile, tries to gage a reaction to the word but he can’t read him. “Good weird,” he clarifies after a moment.

 _I can’t believe I just did that_ , he thinks, corrects himself: _I can’t believe I just did that and_ liked _it_.

“You alright?” James asks.

“Yeah,” Lawrence says and, even with that one word, he somehow manages to sound slightly more grounded than he looked only a minute or so earlier. “Are you?”

“ _Me_? I— Yeah.”

“So this could be a thing,” Lawrence says eventually.

“It could, quite possibly,” James says, laughing, “be a thing.” Lawrence hums at that and then sighs, shifts against the cold underneath him, bumps his knee against James’, saying nothing else.

**Author's Note:**

> To go from the first FH fic that I posted to this a week later...
> 
> That's my secret, Cap: I'll always love trash.
> 
> (Seriously though: I don't normally write this kind of thing, I just read it. This just sort of... happened. It turned out better than expected and I didn't want to leave it sitting around. Besides, this ship could use more fics.)


End file.
